In an information processing device such as a server device, after it is powered on, a firmware executes memory check during a process called POST (Power On Self Test). After the check by the firmware, an OS (Operating System) startup process is executed.
If a broken memory is accessed during the OS startup process before a function to disconnect part of memory, and the like, is enabled, the device is brought to an uncontrollable state and there is no choice but to abnormally end. Therefore, in the startup process, it is required to secure reliability by checking for the memory before starting the OS.
Because the startup process is executed in the manner as described above, the OS cannot be started while the firmware mechanically checks all the memory ranges. This results in occurring of a problem that a waiting time gets longer as the capacity of the memory becomes larger. Thus, various techniques to cope with the problem that a waiting time gets longer are considered.
For example, one of the techniques as described above is disclosed in Patent Document 1. According to Patent Document 1, a memory area is divided into two and a first memory area is checked by the firmware. Then, the OS is started with only the checked memory area. Moreover, according to Patent Document 1, a second memory area is checked by the firmware in parallel with the OS startup process, completion of the check is notified to the OS with SMI (System Management Interrupts). In response to the SMI, the checked memory is hotplugged so as to be available by the OS. According to Patent Document 1, such a process allows parallel execution of memory check and OS initialization and allows increase of the startup speed.
Further, another example of the technique is disclosed in Patent Document 2. According to Patent Document 2, at the time of system startup before the operating system is loaded to the memory, a minimum memory area required for startup of the operating system is checked. Moreover, according to Patent Document 2, after the operating system is executed, access to the memory is detected, and it is determined whether or not memory check has already been done for each page before an accessed memory page is used. If memory check has not been done, memory check is done and a checked memory page is used. According to Patent Document 2, this configuration makes it possible to shorten a startup time when the system of a large-scale memory system is started.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. JP5363187    Patent Document 2: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. JP-A 2000-293391
In the technique disclosed in Patent Document 1, OS initialization may end earlier than memory check depending on the capacity of the memory. In this case, the OS cannot start an application requiring the second memory area until SMI is used. Consequently, there is a risk that this technique does not make startup of an application faster. Moreover, in the technique disclosed in Patent Document 2, there is a need to determine for each access to the memory whether or not the memory has already been accessed, and a process to access the memory is complicated. This causes a problem such as there is a risk that application processing becomes slow.
Thus, various techniques for solving the waiting time problem have been considered, but it has still been difficult to speedily start an information processing device such as a server device and speedily execute an application without delay.